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Welcome to the Michigan Census Research Data Center. 

The Michigan Census Research Data Center (MCRDC) is a joint project of the U.S. Bureau of the Census and the University of Michigan to enable qualified researchers with approved projects to access unpublished Census data in order to conduct research that benefits Census Bureau programs.  Learn More

News and Events

NSF Census Research Network Michigan Node website now live

The Michigan node of the NSF-Census Research Network now has a website: 

http://ebp-projects.isr.umich.edu/NCRN/ 

 

One-Day SIPP Training Workshop

The Michigan node of the NSF-Census Research Network will sponsor a one-day SIPP training workshop at Census Bureau Headquarters in Suitland, Maryland on Friday, May 15. The workshop will focus on SIPP classic, with an introduction to the re-designed SIPP, and is open to analysts at government agencies and nonprofits in the Washington DC area. Please contact MCRDC@umich.edu for more information. 

 

NCRN Virtual Seminar

February 4, 2015, 3:00pm to 4:30pm

Speaker: Amy L. Griffin (UNSW Canberra)

Title: Visualizing Attribute Uncertainty in the ACS: An Empirical Study of Decision-Making with Urban Planners

Location: University of Michigan: Room 3443, ISR-Thompson, Contact Maggie Levenstein (maggiel@umich.edu)

Stream Live: [Click Here] (link will be active about 5 minutes after the start of seminar)

More Information

 

Positions for Economists at the Census Bureau 

The Center for Economic Studies (CES) has announced openings for Economists.

Position Information

Congratulations Aaron Flaaen, Christoph Boehm, and Nitya Pandalai Nayar: Research Accepted to the IMF Fifteenth Jacques Polak Annual Research Conference

The Michigan Census Research Data Center is happy to announce that the joint research of Ph.D. Candidates Aaron Flaen, Christoph Boehm, and Nitya Pandalai Nayar was recently accepted to the International Monetary Fund Fifteenth Jacques Polak Annual Research Conference.

Their paper provides causal evidence for the role of trade and multinational firm activity in the cross-country transmission of shocks. Using the 2011 Tohoku earthquake/tsunami of Japan as a natural experiment, they evaluate the spillovers from the intermediate input linkages of multinational affiliates.  The scope for these linkages to generate cross-country spillovers depends on the elasticity of substitution with respect to other inputs in the domestic economy. They use restricted use Census data with new links to international ownership structure to estimate this elasticity. To focus attention on the role of vertical linkages, they develop a new methodology for separating firm-level imports intended for further manufacture.

They find that those firms with large exposure to intermediate inputs from Japan –-- the U.S. affiliates of Japanese multinational firms -– experience significant output declines in the months following the Tohoku event. Output drops roughly one-for-one with imported inputs, consistent with a Leontief relationship between imported and domestic inputs. Structural estimates of the production function for these firms yield disaggregated production elasticities that are similarly low. For Japanese multinationals, the elasticity across material inputs is 0.2 and the elasticity of substitution between material inputs and a capital/labor aggregate is 0.03. For non-Japanese firms using inputs from Japan, the elasticity of substitution across material inputs is, unsurprisingly, somewhat higher at 0.6.

Such low elasticities imply the presence of spillovers to other upstream and downstream firms, a feature which can magnify the overall transmission of the shock. They point to natural characteristics of intra-firm trade as the source of these strong complementarities for multinational firms.  Their results suggest that global supply chains are sufficiently rigid to play an important role in the cross-country transmission of shocks.

RDC Network Expansion

We are pleased to announce the National Science Foundation has awarded grants for the development of two new Research Data Centers. The new Research Data Centers (RDCs) will be located in Kansas and Nebraska.

Kansas City RDC

  • Location: Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank.
  • Consortium: University of Kansas, Kauffman Foundation, University of Missouri, Columbia, and Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank.

Central Plains RDC

  • Location: University of Nebraska, Lincoln.
  • Consortium: University of Nebraska, Iowa State University, University of Nebraska Medical Center, University of South Dakota, and University of Iowa.

These two new RDCs, along with a new Yale University branch of the NYC RDC, will be built and open by fall 2015. The network currently hosts about 600 researchers working on about 180 active projects in 17 locations (with an additional location to be completed soon). For more information on the RDC network, please see http://www.census.gov/ces/rdcresearch/.

  • Data News

  • Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Records, 2000-2013

    HUD has approved the use of administrative records on FHA loans, federal housing subsidies, and federal public housing. Census has all cases in these databases from 2000-2013, though not all variables. The data is already PIKed and could be linked to other PIKed data such as the ACS, CPS, SIPP, and 2000-2010 Censuses.

  • Select SSA Administrative Data Linked to CPS March Supplement and SIPP, 1991-2011

    CES is making extracts from the Social Security Administration (SSA) Adrecs data available to authorized researchers on approved projects.  These extracts are made up of records where the Protected Identification Keys (PIK) match those in the Current Population Survey (CPS) Annual Social and Economc (ASEC) Supplement (also referred to as the March Supplement) files from 1991 to 2011. Currently CES is making four such extracts available:

- CPSDERX - The Detailed Earnings Record (DER) reports earnings from FICA, non-FICA and self-employment income, from the Detail Segments of the SSA's Master Earnings File for each year starting with 1978. 

- CPSSERX - The Summary Earnings Record (SER) summarizes all earnings information found in the SSA Master Earnings File (MEF) for each year from 1951 to the present.

- CPSMBRX - The SSA's Master Beneficiary Record (MBR) contains the data to administer the Old-Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance (OASDI) Program, and includes entitlement and payment data.

- CPS831X - The SSA's 831 Disability File is a research file created to determine medical eligibility for Old-Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance (OASDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits.

The National Crime Victimization Survey PIK Crosswalk, 2012

The NCVS PIK Crosswalk allows researchers to link the NCVS to other demographic data at the individual level. 

National Crime Victimization Survey, 2006-2012

The 2006-2012 National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) microdata files and documentation is available for approved and authorized projects in the Research Data Centers (RDCs)

The NCVS is the nation's primary source of information on criminal victimization. Each year, data are obtained from a nationally representative sample on the frequency, characteristics, and consequences of criminal victimization in the United States. The survey enables the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) to estimate the likelihood of victimization by rape, sexual assault, robbery, assault, theft, household burglary, and motor vehicle theft for the population as a whole as well as for segments of the population such as women, the elderly, members of various racial groups, city dwellers, or other groups. The NCVS provides the largest national forum for victims to describe the impact of crime and characteristics of violent offenders.

Congratulations to our graduates!

They each spent countless hours laboring in the lab and have accepted exciting positions across the country and around the globe.

Vanessa Alviarez: University of British Columbia, Assistant Professor

Sasha Brodsky: Analysis Group in Boston, Economist

Tanya Byker: Middlebury College, Assistant Professor

Jenny Lin: Oregon State, Assistant Professor

Lin Ma:  National University of Singapore, Assistant Professor

Ryan Monarch: Federal Reserve Board of Governors, Economist

Evan Starr: School of Labor and Employment Relations and the Department of Economics at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, Assistant Professor

Tuba Suzer-Gurtekin: University of Michigan, Post-Doctoral Fellow in Survey Methodology

Marek Zapletal: Brattle Group in San Francisco, Economist

Featured Researcher:  Aaron Flaaen

Aaron Flaaen is a Ph.D. candidate in Economics Department at the University of Michigan with interests in international trade and macroeconomics. His dissertation explores the impact of multinational firms on both source and host economies. In one paper, joint with two other graduate students, he uses data from the Japanese earthquake/tsunami of 2011 to explore how the cross-border input linkages of multinational firms affects the transmission of business cycles and shocks across countries, View Paper. Other projects include a comparison of the characteristics of multinational firms with exporting and domestic-only firms, and measuring the domestic labor market effects of international expansions. The innovative firm-level data from the Census Bureau allow for a more disaggregated analysis of the determinants and effects of multinational activity.

Another strand of research, joint with Matthew Shapiro and Isaac Sorkin, uses matched survey and administrative data to examine the consequences of job loss. This line of work seeks to understand the large and persistent earnings losses following job displacement, and the ways in which the measurement of such losses might be affected by labor market participation, retirement, and other factors.

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CES Dissertation Mentorship Program

The Center for Economic Studies wants to assist doctoral candidates who are actively engaged in dissertation research in economics or a related field using Census Bureau microdata at a Research Data Center. 

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